Ars Biologica

Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS)

The Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS) is an international art-science programme dedicated to practice-based inquiry into the entanglements and tensions of living systems, technologies, and cultures. The program consists of a yearly series of activities in a range of formats, including workshops, field trips, lectures, seminars, collaborative experiments, and a summer school. These activities are led by Czech and international tutors and take place across locations in the South Bohemian Region and in Prague, with some activities held online.

Participants can join either occasionally or over an extended period, propose their own topics for collective inquiry, and initiate new formats of collaboration. In 2026, the ABIS program focuses on five key thematic areas: multispecies research, sound ecologies, experimental AI, slow circuits, and biointelligence. 

The program concept is developed by the Uroboros collective (Michal Kučerák, Markéta Dolejšová) in collaboration with the Spanish foundation TBA21.

Ars Biologica ArtXScience Residency Program

The Ars Biologica residency program connects artists, scientists, and local experts to jointly develop projects at the intersection of art, science, and local practice, explore environmental issues in the region, and create public programs that open these issues to wider audiences.

This year, the program will host Czech and international artists in České Budějovice, where they will collaborate with a scientist from the Biology Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and a local landscape architect. A second international residency will take place in 2027–2028, selected through an open call. Each residency results in a new artwork presented at the Ars Biologica Festival. in March 2028.

The program is being created in cooperation with the international organization Ars Electronica (A) and the Biology Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in České Budějovice.

Urban Field

Urban Field is a project aimed at establishing an agricultural plot of land managed by broad urban communities. The primary purpose of the project, however, is to map and analyse, through anthropological methods, the negotiation process surrounding the establishment of an urban field across a wide spectrum of actors. Urban Field seeks to illuminate how we relate to land and food production in an urban context, as well as what it means to reach agreement on a topic that intersects spatial planning, community practice, environmental issues and even leisure time.

The program concept is developed by Městské pole collective (Veronika Faktorová, Michal Hořejší and Martin Netočný).